‘A sham election’ says Zimbabwe Lawyers

In Edition 204, The Legal Monitor bluntly pronounced the country’s July 31 harmonised elections as a sham after Zimbabwe’s highly anticipated general election turned out to be a farce as predicted by civil society groups which warned of a myriad of irregularities ahead of the polls.

As ZANU PF and President Robert Mugabe celebrated their “landslide victory”, the majority of Zimbabweans wore gloomy faces as they mourned the death of democracy as the election – if one chooses to call it that way – put the final nail on the coffin and a huge amount of work awaits to be done by pro-democracy groups to rescue the country from the precipice.

Just as our front page anchor picture showing a bus owned by the state-run Zimbabwe Passenger Company (ZUPCO) cooling off at a polling station in Harare’s Gunhill suburb after it had ‘delivered’ some voters tells it all, Zimbabweans were once again robbed of their right to freely elect a government of their choice as in 2008, but this time “peacefully” rather than violently. Read more: LM Edition 204